Wednesday, December 13, 2006

The Flying Cadillac

I feel like delivering some exposition...

First, I earlier referred to my group of friends in high school as the Rat Pack. We adopted this name not because we had a penchant for Vegas Lounge Music, or that we had any aspirations of someday headlining at Frank's place in that town. We called ourselves the Rat Pack, because much like a pack of rats if there was mischief afoot, we were most likely at the epicenter.

Since I'm not sure if Lawdog has introduced you to the band, let me take a moment to paint you a picture. When I joined our merry little group there were six members. Burk, our resident barbarian, was six feet plus of pure unadulterated ornery and has been buying beer since the age of 13 when his beard came in. Rotten, who earned his name from the ability to clear a gymnasium with one little popcorn fart. LG, who was the comic relief and could always be counted on to cover our retreat. Lawdog, who we all know and love. Chris, LD's brother and the embodiment of "he was so quiet, you would never have thought he would..." Finally yours truly, Tole. While LD and Chris longed to were building trebuchets to fling bowling balls, I longed to find a way to set the bowling balls on fire.

But I digress. On to the Flying Caddi. It was the beginning of the weekend. Burk had grabbed a case of suds and Rotten had managed to purloin the keys to his mom's new car. Everyone piled in and we made a b-line for some secluded country road to enjoy some forbidden happiness brought to us 12 ounces at a time. Now, we had, out of necessity, about 34 different places we went to drink where the local law enforcement officials would be unlikely to stumble across our fun. As it turns out we could have chosen better than we did on this one occasion.

I was under the impression that we were headed to a place affectionately called Troll Bridge, but as we flew past the turn realization hits. Rotten had a love for speed and we were on a straight deserted country road in an untried car. It was about this time that he exclaims, "Hey look we're doing 120!!" The LG lets fly with, "Coooool." Lawdog's knuckles were white.

It was about now that reality stepped in and reminded us all that this road ends in a T, and said T was about 15-20 feet above the surrounding landscape...

You know tires have a distinct sound when traveling down a county road in excess of 100 mph...

That sound is even more distinct when it suddenly stops and is replaced by the scream of an engine that has had all resistance removed from it's drive wheels...

That sound was soon replaced by Rotten screaming the F word for what seemed like about an hour. We must have flown 80 feet or more before we touched back down on Terra Firma and bounced, not once, but three times cutting a swath through the foliage that looked alot like that scene when Superman's childhood transport came down somewhere in Kansas.

There is one more element to this story that will push the stupidity meter right off the chart. You see, it was the early 80's and Texas had yet to pass a seat belt law. So, you guessed it, not a one of us was strapped down. Ever shake a snow globe? Imagine that all those little flecks were teenage boys inside a rather large car. When we finally came to rest the only people who were still in their original seat were Rotten, the driver, who had been held there by his airbag (LG) and Burk who had bounced off a back seat SRS...me. I was in Burk's lap, somewhat confused as to what exactly had happened except that there was a Burk shaped bruise forming on my back.

When we all get out to survey the damage, Burk immediately exits the vehicle and hurls our, as of yet unopened, case of beer as far into the underbrush as his mammoth arms can manage. And that my friends is the real tragedy of this story. We never found a single one.

My little brother knows the sound a '73 Mustang convertible makes at 70+ as it hits the curb of a divided highway island. He also knows what sound a '56 Thunderbird makes as it t-bones a raggedy old pickup at an unmarked intersection.